widened over the heavens until it shut
out the western sun from their gaze, making the still early afternoon
seem as night.

Creeping over the surface of the sullen water with ghostly footsteps,
the mist soon shrouded the boat in its pall-like folds; impregnating the
surrounding atmosphere with moisture and making the boys believe it was
raining, though never a drop fell.

It was only a sea-fog, that was all.

But it was accompanied by a dampness that seemed like the hand of Death!

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

"SHIP, AHOY!"

"It is the last straw," says the proverb, "that breaks the camel's
back!"

Bob's courage had been on the wane long before the white, woolly fog
environed them; although, up to now he had endeavoured to brave it out
in the presence of Dick, the very consciousness that he was the main
cause of their being in such a perilous predicament preventing him from
betraying the fears he felt.

But, when this octopus of the air clutched them in its corpse-like grip,
breathing its wet vapoury breath into their faces, soddening their
clothes with heavy moisture and slackening their energies as it had
already damped their hopes of a steam-vessel coming to the rescue, Bob,
whose nerves were strained to their utmost tension, at last broke down.

"Oh, Dick!" he cried, bursting into a passion of tears, all the more
vehement now from his ever having been a manly boy and in the habit of
stifling all such displays of emotion, even when severely hurt, as had
happened on more than one occasion in a football scrimmage at school,
whence he got the name of Stoic amongst his mates. "Oh, Dick, poor
Dick! I'm sorry I made you come with me to your death! I wonder what
my mother and dad will say, and Nell too, when they come to learn that
we are lost?"

"Don't 'ee now, Master Bob, give way like that!" said

Dick, the brave lad, forgetting his own sad plight on seeing his unhappy
comrade's alarm and grief. "Cheer up, Master Bob, like a good sort! We
bean't lost yet, ye knows!"

"I'm afraid we are, Dick! I'm afraid we are!" sobbed Bob, as the pair
of unfortunates got gradually wetter and more miserable, if that were
possible; the density of the atmosphere around them increasing so that
it seemed as if they were enveloped in a drenching cloud, this mist of
the sea being the offspring of the waters, and consequently taking after
its humid parent. "Why, we're miles and miles away from land, and
drifting further an